


Where I was Looking For You

by Etnoe



Category: Lost Boys (1987)
Genre: Family, M/M, Mind Control, Power Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:52:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2811050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etnoe/pseuds/Etnoe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David and Michael keep getting halfway - together, apart; dead, alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Outside

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zoi no miko (zoi_no_miko)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoi_no_miko/gifts).



The train rattled beyond the mist and the ocean churned below, and the roar and reverberations they made were enough that it was barely believable David and the others weren't still hanging off the railway tracks.

They balanced on ravine rocks - the ones who belonged and Michael. It was a struggle to keep their balance, the rocks wet with mist slipping under their boots, and part of David was screaming and prickling at the back of his neck. Part of him had been human and still didn't feel that it could fly. The drop wouldn't be any fun otherwise.

Michael, all human, had grabbed onto the closest bodies, Marko and Dwayne letting him cling as they laughed at him, panting with his mouth open from the scream that might have been his last word: _David_.

And his feet weren't touching the ground - that was a trick Marko was good at, leaving people dangling and idiotic without them even knowing.

"Do you wonder why you're not scared?" David asked Michael.

He was plenty scared, heart beating wild and red-hot as he craned his neck towards the clatter of the train. But Michael only glanced over for a split second at the question, nothing of the animal in him recognising the hunger put behind it. All he did was stare up again towards the noise of the train in horror, sometimes craning his neck to look over the narrow ledge to the grey thunder of mist and ocean.

Still didn't notice he was hovering, though. Every few seconds he stepped around in mid-air in an echo of the way the rest of them were slipping on the rocks. Totally absentminded. David joined in with the others' laughter, and that sound finally got Michael to look over and pay attention. " _I_ sure am wondering," David told him.

"About ... about me being scared?" He unwound from Dwayne and Marko and took a few steps, which they whooped at and applauded as Paul made encouraging baby-talk noises. "I just fell ... how far was that, oh my god. You guys are _crazy_. It's kind of a dumb thing to be wondering about." He halfway grinned at the others - wobbling and shaking, but still nearly unconcerned.

That was incredibly far from how it ought to be.

"I'm also wondering why I'm not angry," David said.

 _That_ sounded like a threat to Michael, apparently. His hands made fists, his grin got harder and wider. "If you really want to be, man, no time like the present..." 

Paul howled. "You want to fight? You want to fight already?" and Dwayne's quiet "Hungry already?" sneaked in on the quietest echo to burrow into that human brain.

"He's still shaking," Marko told the rest of them, snickering and awed. "You want to fight _David_ like this?"

Michael didn't even look like he noticed a word they said, his attention direct, focused, hot on David with nothing to spare, though there wasn't any hint of amber in his eyes yet. He'd found something in the drop - maybe going numb from the way the four of them were making inroads on his senses, or maybe more bloodthirsty and further from human already now that he knew what it was like to walk on air. It was different from Laddie, who'd immediately turned docile and trusting all while staying a little too afraid, or Star, who was too alive most of the time and half-disappeared the rest.

They played after that like kids - well, kind of like kids. Making their way back to the tracks, to solid ground, to their bikes in the woods, they flitted around Michael and arranging and rearranging his fists, his bared teeth into fighting poses. He struck out now and then, action breaking through the mist of his mind, sometimes furious and sometimes playing along. It was a familiar violence, a lot like the way David and the others liked to mess around and a lot like every second jerk prowling the Boardwalk: hunger and fun and anger tangled in each other.

When Max had brought home David and the others, over time, it also hadn't been like it was with Star and Laddie now. With no trouble, except for Max himself and so much more for the rest of the world, he'd simply made them brothers. David had started to think that it really wasn't in his blood to do the same.

Marko had decided on instinct that Michael should be saved, allowed flight instead of being left to splatter and sink; he'd thought David would want Michael saved or he'd already have put his teeth in him. Well, why not? He could be theirs. Really, he already was, for now, at least. Their stranger, while he was fun to laugh at, and - David thought about Star, and how she would have to go one way or the other soon, and it was going to be _his_ way - until a better option came up.

 

Or until Michael made himself the only option.

More or less.

 

"Aw, hell," said ... Old Man Emerson. Yeah, that was it. A guy who'd lived in Santa Carla for decades, either hard to kill or who no one really tried to gun for even if it was supposed to be a challenge. _Grandpa_ Emerson: the man who'd shared his home and made it the place where Michael could be hunted to and led from.

"The sun's shining! How is he moving? The frigging sun is SHINING!" Sam. The beloved kid brother. And he wasn't wrong: they both stood high over David with their backs to the light that he recognised from mornings of pushing the night to its utter limits. There had been a lot of nights like that. There wouldn't be any, ever again, not in all the time they'd thought they would have...

Ash lay familiar in the air, and on them, grave-dirt stinking and streaking their hands and faces. Sam gaped and Old Man Emerson held an arm in front of the kid. "And he's spitting blood. Ain't like a bloodsucker to go and do that. It'd be a waste."

"I told you not to remove the goddamn stag head from his gross undead body! What do you _need_ a stag head _for_ , anyway?"

"Handy for stabbing vampires... And stabbing the vampire right out of them, it looks like."

He was right too. Gravity held David's body down all the ways it could, his wounds were still oozing, and - the _goddamned sun_.

Awareness faded in the starkness of the light. Two more things stood out:

Old Man Emerson's hairy eyebrows, and from underneath, the kind of look someone who'd lived long enough gave. Hard. Clever, just enough, as it sized him up. Mostly closed-down against all comers.

Jabbing of a spade towards his neck, shedding dirt with the movements. The metal glinting blindingly, the intent with it real and vicious, and then in a cool and gritty line it was on his neck, pressed down with a sneaker on the top of the blade. 

 

He came to when he was near the home where he and all the others had died, except for Marko... Except for Michael, too. It had a call: Holy, hellish, all at once. A growl went straight through to his bones like it wanted to take his body over - just the ancient, tragically embarrassing engine of the flatbed truck carrying him.

David tried to move. Then he tried to move at least his hands, one still on his chest, on the sticky dryness of his own blood.

There were footsteps, gasps; not Michael alone. He couldn't open his eyes much anymore, but he had an educated guess about how to make his reintroduction count, if they weren't going to kill him just for whatever fireworks might come out of it.

"Hey, Mom."

Lucy wrenched herself away from him with a gasp. Sam started yelling about him even more loudly than he already was, and Grandpa Emerson ... cracked out a sharp bark of laughter.

They would have been family if Max had had his way. It _was_ hilarious.

So David laughed and it came more easily than anything else, and it made it easier to loll his head towards the closest shape standing over him, to focus on the lonely familiarity of how that blood was pounding. What did Michael look like right now, after murder and completely breaking what he was becoming? What was he going to sound like? David _needed_ to hear his voice.

Cool sea-salt air drawn in with a breath made the blood in his mouth feel fresh. "I wonder why I'm not angry."

"If it helps any..." Michael whispered. "I'm scared."


	2. Inside

They didn't know anyone who David had killed. That made a difference - he _was_ a killer and that fact wasn't making anybody happy, but they hadn't seen David and the others go wild with it the way Michael had. David hadn't even had the chance to hurt any of them; there was nothing truly personal there.

The big difference was that they very clearly knew Michael had killed him, since David's body had spent nearly a day hanging on the wall like an escalation of all the taxidermy. It didn't get more personal, and he thought it made it difficult for the others to kill him again, or they pretty much felt like he had a creepy kind of dibs.

What kept David safe right at this moment, even Sam helping to carry him off the truck and out of sight, and swearing unprompted that he wouldn't call the Frog brothers, was that they he was the best person to ask about why Michael was still kind of a vampire.

"The last time I heard you say you were scared, your father..."

"Oh God, Mom, it's okay... It's not that bad. It's not like that." Mom watched Michael wave his hand in the sunlight that came through a gap in the porch roof and, thank God, cracked a smile. "See? Not all that much of a vampire. I might wear sunglasses indoors again. It's not like I'm getting sick from the smell of food, though. Everything's just a little too bright. I can hear you guys this much better."

He held fingers a pinch apart, and Mom folded a hand over them. They sat holding hands for a while. Sam could mock all he liked later, but Michael needed it. He tried to act like it was only for Mom's benefit before she picked up on that fact, trying to distract himself by thinking of fixing the porch roof and all the coaxing it would probably cost to get the tools out of Grandpa.

It worked as long as it had to - Mom looked like she was going to be okay when she went inside to help finish cleaning up/consecrating the house with holy water - but then he had to go find David.

There was a shed out back where Grandpa used to do taxidermy when Mom had been a kid. David had been lifted down off the back of the truck and left in the shade just inside the door. Michael had barely known what his body was doing when he was carrying David, the way his thoughts had gone crazy on seeing him again while he was moving a little, was breathing quietly. He'd looked the same as when he'd been dead. Clean, though his wounds were still open under the soaked mess of his shirt. Young. Nice, maybe, sweet?

Fine - _innocent_. It wasn't true, nowhere near true, and there was no getting around the fact that that was how it seemed. If David was out here now, though, after getting horn through his heart and sunlight on his skin, what was he? If he wasn't a vampire - wasn't someone who had to be a killer, what could he be?

Still David. Had to remember that. And 'not angry', which could mean he wanted to fight or that he wanted to hang out, take a ride, have some takeout.

Sam stood outside the door of the shed in his classic terrified look, big eyes and mouth, but he slipped inside as soon as Michael was close enough that he'd be right behind him. "You have to tell us what's wrong with him!" His voice carried sharply, desperate. "Michael's still all ... weird, and he's affected by the vampire wards we're setting up!"

Stepping inside, Michael found him standing a safe-seeming distance from David. He turned to grab Michael's arm as soon as he was close enough and told him softly, "I think I know how it happened. But--" turning to David again "--you have to confirm!"

Slow blink. That was all David did.

"Explain it to him, Sam."

There hadn't been much that tipped them off to Michael's case of lingering vampirism, but Sam made the heightened senses sound like judgment and condemnation, and the flinching from the holy water ... he was so scared. At least it didn't make Michael hungry. Yet. Again. Not again...

"You killed him before you killed Max," Sam said, turning to Michael again after finishing the explanation, probably because David was only responding by keeping his eyes open for longer periods of time. "So that made a difference. You weren't supposed to kill anybody or the vampiritude would stick, right, and maybe even a different bloodsucker than the big boss counts. Or at least he counts a little bit, enough to make it so you're ... like this.

"So have you heard about this happening before, vamp? If Mike kills you again will it go away? Get worse? Come on, vamp. Which is it?"

Long, heavy sigh.

"There are other questions to ask here, Michael." David's eyes glinted blue, like he was just human. His voice was surprisingly strong, and simultaneously sounded exactly like Michael had expected. "What have you lost?"

_You. Some friends. Knowing what it's like when someone goes to nothing under my hands - that's losing something._

He couldn't say it. David felt two of those losses much harder, and even if the vampires deserved to have been taken down all the way, he wasn't the type to call it fair. Too much of a mean fighter. And Michael couldn't even guess how long David had known the other vampires, but they'd moved together every time he'd seen them, or that Star had spoken about them, or that Mom had mentioned freaking out a little about a weird biker gang around the video shop.

"You have your home, Michael. Fortified, now that you all know about the secret of Santa Carla, murder capital. Safe. You have your brother, here. Your mother, your granddad, your goddamned _dog_."

"He's my dog," Sam muttered. Michael just watched blood well out of the corner of David's mouth.

"And I have..." David closed his eyes. "You won't get a word more until I have something back." A smile. "Or until I'm dead again."

Sam's galloping pulse probably meant that he would have offered to get him that way. Michael took him by the shoulder and pulled him back, like he used to do to drag his baby brother into safety or behaving a little better. "There's a bottle of wine, Sammy. It tasted like wine - it was his blood. Back at that hotel, you know? That's what we'll have to get."

"It would probably just bring all his power back! He's not gonna tell us anything once he gets that!"

"He's not going to tell us anything without it. And he's not going to heal. He's not going to die. But if we give him just a little... Look, what else are we going to do?"

"I can be your shed mascot for the rest of your lives," David suggested. "Hey, maybe forever. Might be able to drag myself upright in time to keep the grandkids company." The way David's face would go from laughter to flat anger inside of a second felt like something Michael had missed. He _hadn't_ , it had been something that kept him on edge all the time when they were hanging out. But back then, it might have been nice to have an excuse to be on edge.

"We're going to have to get him out of here one way or the other," Michael said. "You get that bottle, I can watch him."

It took Sam a lot more convincing than that, and Mom and Grandpa after him. It was their only option, in the end - except for killing David. That was still the other obvious choice to make, but they continued to avoid taking it seriously.

Why was it such a relief?

He went back to the shed, standing outside and waving Sam and Mom off as they went to the hotel - Grandpa was staying behind, saying he'd earned his nap. When everyone else was finally gone he went inside, sank down and sat beside David. Standing over him would be what he deserved, the way he loved lording his powers over humans. Michael was himself enough to think it was a jerk move, even if he was _something else_ enough to want to keep David safe.

"So we match," Michael said. "It can't be like this."

"Shouldn't surprise you. You're like me. And I'm like you," David added with a nod, like it was a favour he was doing by saying so. "I think we were always more evenly matched than I wanted to admit. Maybe you were born that way. Bet now a fight would be even more fun. You might find yourself in trouble now."

Michael stared at his smile instead of touching its curve, which felt like it was mocking him even more than David was mocking his own weakness. This annoying asshole - and he was so glad it wasn't his fault he was gone anymore. That, he thought, was from himself. Not from this lurch of recognition something inside him gave as soon as he laid eyes on David, or the steady glow of satisfaction that recognition brought up in him. He still didn't want to be a killer, but he did want...

"We could be evenly matched if you were a vampire again and I was fully human. We all know about you guys by now. We'd be prepared."

The blue sliver of David's gaze set on him with complete focus now, much sharper than before.

Michael swallowed to make his dry mouth work, and said, "Your blood runs through my veins. Remember?" His voice shook, so it was probably a pretty shit attempt at riling David up. "So take it back. Take that blood, leave me human, and neither of us has to deal with this bullshit. Can this vampire magic stuff work that way?"

He was sitting close enough. He was sure David wasn't as weak as he was pretending. If nothing else, David could play that trick where it was impossible to know which way was up or down, and draw Michael in until the importance of direction disappeared as long as the warmth and the pain was there...

David had a finger tracing his arm. Michael turned his arm to present his wrist, and the fingertip traced a vein. For a long time they sat that way, the sunlight falling into the shed changing direction and fading.

"Clever - but you're not winning that easily."

" _What_ , David?" Michael complained. "It would solve our problems!"

David's eyes stayed on him, but his head tilted towards the sound of the car coming back with Mom and Sam. "I can't have your blood in mine. Too much of a risk. Not going to listen to what you say, not going to do what you make me do. It would be too easy to.

"Guess I'll just have to find out what I am now. You'll have to do the same, Michael."

He was always saying his name like a challenge or a taunt. Right then it was infuriating. So was seeing his family run closer, Mom with the wine bottle of blood, and seeing David fade where he lay. The sun was sinking, and it must have still held some power over him. He looked like it was a struggle, but he'd become almost nothing by the time Mom reached the door - and then, soundless except for their gasps and sighs, there was a twist of mist that seeped out into the sunset.

It made Michael angry then. That night, in his bed when everyone else was quiet, it was almost funny. It almost made him feel fond. Of course David had made his way through again.

 

_What have you lost?_

That question stuck with Michael, mostly because it got a few more answers.

"Get out of my room! Jeez." Sam started to wave him out. He didn't touch him, didn't even get near him - he shooed him like Micahel was an unusually wimpy stray cat. "And put that down, it's mine."

"Well, Sam, maybe I want a hare-legged rabbit too," Michael said, even as he poked dubiously at the latest offering Grandpa had left in Sam's room. The way the legs looked basically and simultaneously totally off and the weird match on the fur made it as unsettling as the best of the rest of the taxidermy patchworks. "He's never given me any of this stuff. Screaming nightmares ought to be an equal opportunity."

Distractedly staring into air, then starting to pet Nanook like he realised he needed a reason to be distracted, it took Sam a few seconds to answer. "Who cares? Don't be a dumbass. You totally don't want pet Frankensteins."

He spent way too much time staring into the distance these days, and sometimes - in a dull, expectant kind of way - getting twitchy as he watched nothing at all move around close to him.

 

"Nope. You are not going to work full-time once summer's over. You are going back to school. You are. You are," Mom said in a smiling and unfamiliarly stern way, not letting him get a full word out as he tried to protest.

So much for all the _conversations between friends_ she claimed to want to have. It still wasn't like they had money to spare, and with Mom out of a job again... She wanted him normal, though. She wanted everything safe, too, and she'd stare at him with all this worry, and she didn't seem to let him stay alone in the same room as Sam much.

Sometimes it was like she didn't even hear him start to talk at all, something closed off in her. Then he'd just leave the room and go walk around the house to catch the feel of the night air.

 

Grandpa was another story. Unsurprisingly, since that seemed to be his approach to life and the rest of humanity. The weirdness did grow on you after a while.

"I watch you flinching," he said straight out, sitting across from Michael at the kitchen table. "Away from the light when the others open the curtains. All the spots by the doors and gates and windows where they keep sprinkling holy water - I don't figure Sam's about to stop anytime soon. Not a bad habit. I'm not about to break him from it."

Some things about him, though, you could only tolerate. Couldn't really pick a fight with an old man, after all.

"But!" said Grandpa, and stood to go to the fridge. "You can have some of my Oreo stash and a beer. Just for now." He put a packet and a can on the table.

Michael took them. He listened to Grandpa's heartbeat, as had become habit before eating or drinking - one he didn't tell anyone about - and it was all right. Not something that took over his own pulse and dragged him in. The beer and Oreos were a lot more promising.

He didn't say thanks. Grandpa sighed - maybe he got it. They shared the pack of Oreos.

He didn't bother to watch for wisps of mist or smoke; none of his family seemed to. Maybe they couldn't. It was all right, though, since he could hear them all around the house and could keep them safe. Even if it was from a distance.

 

By the time David came back -- "Finally!"

The face at his window didn't solidify out of the mist as certain and composed as it ought to. Michael had expected fangs and glowing eyes, too, but he had hoped to be wrong about that. He opened the window.

"Missed me too, huh," David said flatly, and braced himself to stay in place when Michael pulled at him.

"Come on," Michael said. "Come in."

"Inviting me _in_?"

"Yeah, sure."

David pulled back and stared with a growing snarl. "I wonder... What would look back at me from your mirror? It's been a long time since I saw a reflection - nobody's been dumb enough to invite me into their house in years. Are you looking to find out, Michael? Find out what it looks like I'm capable of?"

"I asked strictly because I want you to come the fuck indoors. I don't care what you see - I don't like looking in mirrors myself, these days." Especially when he looked from the corner of his eyes.

"So much for being scared, Michael."

"I can't keep being scared. So I'm different, but it's ... It's just not that bad. And you--"

"I told myself not to come here. But like there's any other real fucking option."

"I'm not planning anything. No fighting. I just want you here. David, please!" His voice went somewhere between the obstinate difficulty of begging, and simple desperation. _Embarrassing_. But he knew it didn't matter if the others could hear, and he had to. Michael thought he felt now what had made David say he could have been one of them even after Marko's death, and Star and Laddie had defected because of him; the same kind of thing that had got David to turn towards him even after having been killed by him.

Blood or fucking magic or whatever, he didn't really care for the name of it. It felt like David fit, and the way his life was at the moment, he was the only thing that did. There was no point to feeling this alone except to end it.

"If it were any one of the others--" David let Michael drag him inside with arms around his shoulders and waist, and his own arms moved to echo the hold. If it were any one of the others, the two of them would have been the way it was with Michael and Sammy, all casual shoves and resting on, then pushing off each other. He laughed, short and wild, and he and David fell on the bed still holding on to each other, eventually working their way under the covers, finally falling asleep. Still holding on. "The dog is on top of me," David said, muffled and overheated, in the morning light. "Why is the dog on top of me?"

"He doesn't like you," Michael said out of bitter experience, and started trying to heft Nanook off the bed and David. "If you were breathing, he'd be crushing all the oxygen out of you. Sorry, David, he's trying to kill you."

"It's true! Good job, Nanook!" Sam said from outside. A few more steps from him and the dog groaned and got up on his own, reluctant for a few steps and then bounding. He and Sam greeted each other down the hall with enthusiasm.

Sam's voice carried clearly as he went down the stairs, not bothering to speak loudly enough to be pointed teasing, not lowering his voice as if he was nervous. "Having a sleepover with those two... I'm beginning to have doubts about how tame you are."

David took a deep breath presumably because he could. "Kid's observant. Knows what to worry about."

"He's not bad," Michael said fondly. It was almost a shock to remember again how much he liked and loved his brother. This house. His family.

He wanted to roll over and try to take up Nanook's position on David. A hand over his heartbeat stopped him before he could.

"I'm still not hungry," David said. "More's the pity."

"But you are stronger now." The hand pressed firmly down, feeling him out rather than restraining him.

"I've found ways."

"Does it have anything to do with how you've been hanging around the house this whole time?" Michael asked idly. "It really didn't seem like the normal kind of thing for you to do."

The silence from David was profound, the conversation, kitchen/bathroom noises, and old creaks from the rest of the house thrown up in stark relief.

"What does that mean, Michael?"

"I haven't seen you, if that's what you're wondering about. But the effect you were having on my family was like ... well, I knew what to look for, I guess, since you did the same thing to me before."

"Yeah. Me and the others. Messing with your head. The same way I've been messing with your family."

Michael raised his head. It felt natural to look at David like this, in the morning light. It wouldn't have been anything like okay if they weren't whatever they were now. Or even if David hadn't taken to working his way inside his family's heads, redirecting their senses, dissolving their thoughts for a few hours at a time. More subtle than he'd been with Michael, and probably taking his time more than he had when he'd had a real family to fall back on.

"David. I know. You thought I didn't? How could I not? They're my family ... I know, already knew days ago. It's why I wasn't surprised to finally see you here."

"That's not," David said, his face still and blank, "very much like you."

"And if I've changed?" Michael shrugged. "Big fucking surprise. So have they. They're scared of me now. There's holy water all over this house, Grandpa watches me like... You didn't go that far. They're only being hunted as much as they're hunting me." He smiled, just a little, because that was tailor-made to fit David's sense of humour. "Fine line between walking meat and family, huh? Now as ever."

"Not like that with the others. Max brought the guys in - we were his sons. They were never like this and I didn't do this with them. Not until you and the other two that things got this fucked up, the three of you betraying us, and you...

"You can't be this. With the way that you feel about your family?"

And then he smiled, the brilliant piece of shit, sly and furious and just altogether enough to drag Michael along into anything so he could prove that he could keep up. "I guess you win again. You pushed it that much further, Michael."

"I wouldn't ever let you hurt them," Michael insisted, a little confused by how thrown he seemed. "But you just needed to ... I figured you need to be here. It makes sense. As much as anything does."

David pulled Michael down - not on top of him, which would have been promising, but firmly beside him, on his back while David lay on his front. Still - single bed, the two of them so close... If it weren't for all the household sounds from the others, Michael had a clear idea of how he'd have liked this to go. David just spoke, and as he went on, Michael just held him a tighter.

"Sometimes, when I was out there, I thought I did drink your blood in that shed - after you killed me and made me a little too human, and stayed a little too much of a vampire. I think you made me drink and forget, and now you're in my head like I was in yours. You sure would find your goddamn way eventually.

"I didn't want to come back here, Michael. I didn't want to find it so easy to act like your family is mine. I don't want to look for you inside myself, but it makes too much sense. What else is there to look for?"


	3. Looking for you

Eventually, Lucy called, and Michael went. Good! There was too much that was real and easy about his skin and tangling fingers in his hair. Familiar in ways that meant they'd wanted to know each other more than they had had time and opportunity to, than trust allowed for. The familiarity of wanting and imagining, and being able to tell that someone else mirrored it - and knowing so little else.

"There has to be a better monster. You or me." That was a comfortable thing to say as he turned his back to the shared bed and sat on the windowsill, just prior to launch. It didn't have to mean one or the other of them alone: it did mean a hierarchy. Michael needed beating so bad. David wanted more than anything to give him that fight.

Rematch, Michael! Then winning. Then keeping.

The thought of it kept the loneliness back long enough to get him into the woods. He would have turned around eventually, he knew, and got closer to doing so the more hours went by. There wouldn't have been another option. The house and what it held were beacons to him in all the senses he had left - he hadn't been able to help making his mark on the people in it, after all.

But _then_ : "If I believed in signs," David said.

Thorn's growl was short and bassy, a don't-fuck-with-me sound, and then he trotted closer in a companionable way that he had never been when Max was around.

"Have you been looking for me? I wasn't. That was dumb." David had pet him before, when Max had been on a certain kind of kick. Doing it now took him a long time back.

He knew what he had to do.

"Hound of hell. Bloodhound? I hope so. You have the scent." He held his wrist to the dog's nose. "Point me on the way. It's time for me to find what was taken from me."

He looked solemnly past the tree trunks, as far as he could see.

"If _I_ can come back..."

 

*

 

"Wait. A real hound of hell?" Michael said into the quiet of the forest, still staring in the direction David had taken with the dog. "Really, like, actually? But it was in a frigging comic book."

Nanook's opinion amounted to sitting down firmly and refusing to take another step in the direction David and the other dog had gone in. It was way too easy for Michael to take it as a serious answer. By now, he'd believe Nanook had been bred for all aspects of vampire hunting.

"I just thought we could go hunt up Max's dog and bring it so he'd have a pet," he said, because Nanook was being a pretty willing audience. "It could be a reminder, sort of a memento. Dumb idea." Michael put his head in his hands. It was a really human idea. David had said he'd got more human! He'd looked it. Like he could be happy.

"He wasn't supposed to follow it. How would he even think to go looking for the other vampires. That's not even possible. It shouldn't be!"

The forest held only its normal amount of noise. Not spooky and quiet, just birds and small wildlife.

"I mean, holy shit."

But it was getting darker; Nanook's eyes were starting to get that predator shine to them. Michael wondered if his could look the same - not fully a vampire's, but still some kind of predator, and not human. Something else. Something more like David than anything else, David and his limitlessly insane ideas.

"Find Sam," he said, "go home!" The dog just sat there, wagging his tail once or twice as he ignored Michael's instructions.

Michael was the one who turned and left, heading in the direction he'd seen David go in.

How far would he go for David? How far would he go for himself?

It fit the wildness inside him, born with him, to try and find out.


End file.
